NIAID Selects Sarah Read as Principal Deputy Director

October 2, 2024

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has named Sarah W. Read, M.D., MHS, as the principal deputy director for the institute. In this role, Dr. Read will work with the NIAID director to oversee the institute's extensive portfolio of basic, clinical, and translational research designed to address infectious, allergic and immunologic diseases, as well as provide leadership in the development and implementation of NIAID's strategic plan.

"Dr. Read is a proven and recognized scientific leader with years of experience successfully managing NIAID's HIV/AIDS portfolio and planning, implementing and overseeing complex, international clinical trials," said NIAID Director Jeanne M. Marrazzo, M.D., M.P.H. "These achievements as well as her ability to work collaboratively with stakeholders across the U.S. government, academia, and industry, and her commitment to inclusivity make her well-suited to share responsibility in leading NIAID's vast research enterprise and setting a course for the future."

Prior to her appointment as NIAID principal deputy director, Dr. Read served as the deputy director of NIAID's Division of AIDS, a position she had held since 2018. In that capacity, she oversaw the division's more than $1 billion HIV/AIDS research portfolio and clinical trials networks and played a major role in advancing science for the prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS, co-infections such as tuberculosis, and non-infectious complications of HIV, such as cardiovascular disease among people with HIV. Several of these efforts resulted in changes to U.S. and international treatment guidelines. Dr. Read began her career in the Division of AIDS in 2006 as a medical officer in the division's Therapeutics Research Program before being named as the program's director in 2012.

Dr. Read came to NIH in 2001 as a clinic physician in the NIH Clinical Center's Intramural AIDS Program. She then completed a clinical fellowship in infectious diseases and joined NIAID's Laboratory of Immunoregulation where her research focused on immunopathogenesis and immune-based therapies for HIV infection.

In addition to her HIV/AIDS work, Dr. Read played a major role in the Accelerating COVID-19 Therapeutic Interventions and Vaccines (ACTIV) public-private partnership, a component of NIH's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In that role, she led a working group of U.S. government agencies, pharmaceutical companies, private donors, and academia which prioritized candidate therapeutics to evaluate in master protocols. Ultimately, more than 38 potential COVID-19 treatments were tested in 11 protocols enrolling more than 23,000 clinical trial participants in a global network of more than 620 clinical trial sites. She continues to play a key role in NIAID's ongoing pandemic preparedness efforts.

Dr. Read is a graduate of Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., where she received her bachelor's degree in biology and medical degree. She obtained a master's degree of health sciences in clinical research from Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

She succeeds NIAID's former principal deputy Dr. Hugh Auchincloss, M.D., who retired from federal service in September 2024.

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